No one will ever entertain Milwaukeeans like Jerry Grillo. His voice is smoother than fine scotch, and he has more energy than a teenager. He grew up in the same town as Bob Dylan, taught Brian Richie of the Violent Femmes and has four fine recordings to his name. Recently Jerry sat down for a lunch interview at Trocadero.

OMC: How did you get involved with music?

JG: Music was always a part of my family. My brother's rock band, The Renowns, won a contest held by a record label. They went to Chicago, recorded a song, and it became number one in different parts of the country. It was a rockabilly kind of song, an Elvis kind of thing. It was called, "My Mind's Made Up." I always thought, 'I want to do that too.' I always sang in church and the choirs in school, so it wasn't as if I never sang. It's just that I never did it publicly until I went to college. I started doing shows, community theatre, "The Fantasticks," "Cabaret," "Fiddler on the Roof," all kinds of things like that. I had very good parts. So I guess that was the whole start for me.

But even back then, at 22, I was doing standards. I'd go out to the piano bars and play music, even in Chicago. When I moved here I would go to Chicago and hang out and get up and cut my teeth on the standards because I was 22 years old, and those songs at 22 don't mean as much as when you're older. I'm not sure they're meant to be sung by younger people. I mean, not so say that they can't be, but I just think you almost have to live those things.

OMC: Life experiences 22-year-olds definitely don't have.

JG: Right. All I wanted to do was sing. I thought "Alfie" was a great tune. That was probably the first tune I was doing in the clubs in Chicago in 1968. I thought it was cool because I was very young and I was in these beautiful clubs and people were listening, although I kept thinking they're being somewhat forgiving. I kept thinking, 'You're not that good.' The pianist was great. I thought, 'You know what? These people are being very nice to you because you're young.' I don't know if that was true or not. Maybe I have the same voice now, it's just gotten deeper. It's very odd. "Alfie" does have a beautiful message. I still sing that today and remember it as kind of a first for me.

That's how I started, a lot of theatre and wedding bands, which were fun. A little controlled and kind of dull, but they gave you the opportunity to sing.

OMC: And they usually pay well.

JG: Yeah. Sometimes better than the clubs. I still do weddings with the big orchestras, which is great. I love that. I even went into a '70s stage with a band called Sweet Earth, which was a seven-piece show band. We did covers of The Fifth Dimension, Sergio Mendez, Stevie Wonder and Tony Orlando and Dawn. All of that era we were doing covers. It was three-part harmony -- two girls and myself. We were just like Tony Orlando and Dawn. I had a resemblance to Tony, with the mustache and long hair. The girls had long gowns and looked like Dawn.

OMC: When was this?

JG: This was the mid-'70s. An offshoot of that group also traveled with Mayor Meier on the 4th of July and we'd sing in the park with him. So I started to get to know people early on through music. But then that group fizzled instead of sizzled.

Then I think I did some club work, but then I stopped singing for about 10 years publicly. I really missed it, but I was busy doing other stuff. I think I was busy celebrating the disco era. I was too busy having a good time.

I went back to the conservatory in 1990 or '92, somewhere in there. Even that seems long ago. I went back to take vocals. I had previously taken vocals with Martha Artis. She's very fun. She's a Milwaukee institution and a wonderful woman. But she didn't see me as a jazz singer. I don't know if that's true, but I kind of got that feeling from her. She was trying to push me in a direction that I didn't seem to want to go. So I learned from her that maybe there was more I had to learn or understand about jazz and singing. But mostly what she taught me was that something was missing. I had some other style. When that ended I thought maybe jazz wasn't for me, but in the back of my mind I kept thinking it was.

So I went back to Jackie Allen, who I was so impressed with. She is doing very well today in Chicago. She taught me for two years at the conservatory. The biggest thing I learned from her was breath control, which I think previously I had been a little lazy about. She changed my entire way of thinking. She was just so good at explaining things. She looked at you almost like an athlete because you have to take in the proper amount of air and when you perform it's almost like a sport. She got me out in the clubs here, which was a major effort for me years ago. I think it was seven or eight years ago I did my first gig and realized what it takes to do a whole evening of three full sets. Fortunately with jazz you have instrumentals and the singer is not spotlighted the whole night. But three hours! I had to work up to that. I never could have sung that many tunes in one night years ago. It's something you learn, selection of tunes. You are always conscious of how you construct your set, varying the tempos and styles and depending upon the space you're in or the venue or the event that you're playing for. Jackie taught me a lot of that.